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Comment by hammock | Hacker News Reader

Some initial analysis-

Of the top 20 employers, the average approval rate was 76%. Most of the employers are outsourcing subcontractors or accounting firms. But there were five employers in the top 20 with 90%+ approval rates: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple.

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Just to add some context to this since I was a bit confused. The H-1B goes through the lottery to see which applications get seen by immigration. This seems to be the approval rates of the H-1B after the lottery which makes sense. The FAANG applications are probably mostly legit. 90% acceptance rate for an H-1B before lottery though seemed a little high :)

Haven't checked the data. But lottery is for first 3 years. After that company can keep applying for extensions. For FAANG companies extension approval rate can be higher as you have already noticed.

I am even more confused. Can we infer from any of these numbers what is the ratio for a company between original applicants, and post review, post lottery H1B approval?

Don't believe so, no. The lottery is supposed to be blind though, so no company has any edge for any given applicant. That said, one strategy some companies take is to pack in as many applications as possible to get as many people through.

Some companies have more initial denials than approvals. For 2019, DELOITTE CONSULTING LLP, Initial Approvals: 298, Initial Denials: 564

That’s really funny. Makes sense.

And it's a question as to whether any of these FAANG companies actually need to hire any H1Bs considering how much money they have. How many well paying jobs are they exporting for no good reason other than they want to keep more money.

I can't speak for every role, but I've worked with a lot of H1B holders in not-entry-but-not-senior positions (think $300K+ but not $500K+).

I can't think of a single case where there would be an "obvious" replacement for that person -- not just in the US, but anywhere in the world. In fact, most of those H1Bs I've worked with eventually end up switching to the O1 anyways (for reference, very few SWEs -- even at FAANGs -- would quality for the O1).

For every guest worker who meets the program's purpose there's 100 more working for the minimum salary in a position that was crafted to turn away domestic applicants.

I don't know for sure what the ratio is, but I think that you are mostly correct. There are some YouTube videos that show lawyers discussing how to rig the process.

I hesitate to rely on my anecdotal experience but my opinion is that unless they are really high level programmers or whatnot they are butts in seats.

FB and Google are well known for paying near or at top of market salaries for developers and PMs. Netflix is even more explicit about this - their compensation philosophy (available on their website) can be summarized as "We will not be outbid." (from personal experience I know they really mean it)

These companies sponsor H1B visas because some of the people they wish to hire happen to not able to work in the US without a visa. They'll hire anyone who passes the interview.

This form of reasoning is very common but very confused IMO. Logically thinking, everyone would want to keep more money. I don't know why a rational thinking entity would try to make decisions that would increase costs. Everyone optimizes. Optimization is the basis of any free economy.

If it were a money game they wouldn't be hiring a bunch of people in the most expensive part of the world to pay them huge salaries, they would just base everything in other countries.

Maybe it's just that they want to recruit good people and some good people just happen to live outside the US?

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